Vänstern, FN och diktatorerna

Now the hard left is finally talking about torture and other undemocratic abuses in Egypt and Jordan, as well as the despotism of virtually all Arab regimes. Do you recall any campus protests against Egypt or Mubarak? Do you recall any calls for divestment and boycotts against Arab dictators? No, because there weren’t any. The hard left was too busy condemning the Middle East’s only democracy, Israel.

Radical leftists and campus demonstrators, by giving a pass to the worst forms of tyranny, encouraged their perpetuation. Now, finally, they are jumping on the bandwagon of condemnation, though still not with the fury that they reserve for the one nation in the Middle East that has complete free speech, gender equality, gay rights, an open and critical press, an independent judiciary and fair and open elections.

The double standard is alive and well on the hard left, and its victims include the citizens of Arab regimes who suffer under the heal of authoritarian dictators. Even more important they include victims of genocides, such as those perpetrated in Rwanda, Darfur and Cambodia–victims who did not prick the consciences of the hard left because the perpetrators were Arabs or Communists, rather than Americans or Israelis.

The same must be said for the United Nations, which rewarded Arab despots by according them places of honor on human rights bodies that devoted all of their energies to demonizing Israel.

In a recent op-ed, Amnon Rubenstein, the conscious of Israel, has pointed out that the UN Human Rights Commission, to which both Egypt and Tunisia were elected, has gone out of its way to compliment both regimes. Egypt was praised for steps it has “taken in recent years as regard to human rights…” Tunisia was lauded for constructing “a legal and constitutional framework for the promotion and protection of human rights.”

Israel, on the other hand, was repeatedly condemned for violating the human rights not only of Palestinians, but of its own citizens as well.